The "Middle East and Terrorism" Blog was created in order to supply information about the implication of Arab countries and Iran in terrorism all over the world. Most of the articles in the blog are the result of objective scientific research or articles written by senior journalists.

From the Ethics of the Fathers: "He [Rabbi Tarfon] used to say, it is not incumbent upon you to complete the task, but you are not exempt from undertaking it."

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Friday, November 30, 2012

Read the article in Italiano (translated by Yehudit Weisz, edited by Angelo Pezzana)

Ever since Mubarak was forced to resign in February 2011, the sense of a new dawn has swept over Egypt. Grand words and phrases such as “democracy”, “civil rights”, “freedom” and “state of institutions” have become the focus of political discourse, because of the sense that all of those fine characteristics of democracy have finally come to Egypt. As citizens of a state that has been treading on the path of independence and sovereignty for more than two hundred years, the Egyptians have been waiting for their turn to board the democracy train and enjoy its advantages, which many other peoples have been doing, among them peoples who have overthrown dictators and won their freedom only a few years ago, like the peoples of Eastern Europe.For the first time in the history of modern Egypt, true, not rigged, elections were held for parliament and the presidency, and for the first time the people of Egypt saw how their sweet dream to be a state of its citizens is coming true, a state of constitution and law, of law and order, not the state of a dictator and his sons where every decision is an expression of the personal interest of someone who no one knows when – if at all – his autocratic rule will come to an end. The immediate expression of these hopes was supposed to be an upgrade to the Egyptian economy and an increase of per capita income. In a country where tens of millions live in unplanned neighborhoods, without running water, sewage, electricity or telephone, economic welfare is a matter of existential importance, and without it, life is too much like death. But the greater the hope, the greater the disappointment. Almost two years have passed since the beginning of the “Spring” and Egypt only continues to slide down the slippery, dangerous slope into the swamp of political, civil, constitutional, and administrative problems, with almost no control of how things develop as they bring Egypt closer to the brink. The paralysis that has taken hold of the government is an obstacle to any progress in the wording of the new constitution, which was supposed to give the country a set of consensual and binding rules of the political game, and the rage over the lack of these rules drives many Egyptians out of their minds. The elected president, Muhammad Mursi, a representative of the long-standing and well-known Muslim Brotherhood movement, at first enjoyed much credit from the public at large, but is now perceived in these troubled times as the new dictator, after issuing a few “constitutional declarations” which grant him broad powers over other governmental agencies, particularly the legal system. He dismissed the attorney general, despite the claim that he had no authority to do so. According to Mursi’s “declarations”, his decisions are not subject to legal review, not even by the high court. Many Egyptians – even those who believed in him, supported him and voted for him – now feel that two years ago they managed to overthrow a civilian dictator and in his place they got a religious dictator. In the summer, when he dismissed Field Marshall Tantawi and other military commanders, his prestige increased in the eyes of most of the citizens of the country because this step was interpreted as the end of the rule of officers and the beginning of civilian rule. Even the cruelty of the military in breaking up the demonstrations against him added to Mursi’s popularity, since he was seen as an opposing force to the military. However, he quickly lost a significant portion of the public credit because he failed to reconvene the parliament after it had been dispersed by the high court and because he did not convene the committee for drafting the constitution.Mursi's public struggle with the legal guild arouses the anger of opponents and supporters alike: his opponents rage over his attempts to control the legal system, which is supposed to be free, professional and without political bias, and his supporters are angry because he has not controlled this elite, professional class, which is not elected, but imposes its agenda on the state. With the military, Mursi succeeded to avoid conflict, but this is because he does not dare touch the economic monopolies from which the military makes a very good livelihood. The reason that Mursi did not take over the assets of the military is because he needs loans from the deep pockets that the military controls without oversight of the office of treasury or the tax authority.On top of the sense of failure of the state, there is the poor performance of the Cairo stock market, which fell in recent days by about 10 percent. This decline means that many citizens of the country have lost a significant part of their savings, which only worsens their sense of lack of personal security. In addition, a sharp decline in the market indicates a depreciation in investments, in sources of employment and livelihood, even for those who do not invest in the stock market. The Egyptian economy, which suffers severely from the lack of foreign investment and tourism, depends today almost solely on one source of hard currency – fees of passage in the Suez Canal. This is the reason that those who govern the state do not speak at all about cutting off relations with Israel. Because the atmosphere of a tense security situation – even if it has not actually deteriorated to acts of hostility –will cause an immediate increase in the fees for insurance for ships that pass through the canal, reduce the profitability of using it and cause severe damage to this important source of income.An important economic detail is the fact that it is now difficult for Egypt to get a loan from the international bank without these loans being guaranteed by other countries. Europe, which is sunk in its own economic problems, cannot be a guarantor for Egypt, and the United States grants guarantees in exchange for a political price like keeping the relations with Israel and strict adherence to the trappings of democracy. The lack of international funding might force the government of Egypt to reduce the subsidies on food, mainly on bread, ‘arifa, which serves as basic food to the citizens of the state. Any increase to the price of bread, even the slightest, might cause millions of citizens to stream into the streets and threaten the government with the slogans of the “revolution of the hungry”. This has happened several times in the past, and the last thing that Mursi needs is to harm the weakest class of the Egyptian people, those who spend most of their income on buying the most basic food items.The Muslim Brotherhood movement, which won the lion’s share of the seats of parliament and the office of presidency, lost a great deal of the sympathy that it once had in recent months, because of complaints that all it wants is authority and power so that it can enjoy the pleasures that derive from it - the budgets and fat salaries that its leaders get. Even among the supporters of the Brotherhood there is a concern that the moment they came to power they distanced themselves from the people and have become the ruling elite, interested only in staying in power at all costs, at the expense of the population and other civil bodies.Long Live Tahrir SquareThe sense of having lost out politically, together with the sense of hunger drives Egyptians again to Tahrir Square, from where, perhaps, deliverance might come, but the various existing trends within the population turn the demonstrations into violent conflicts, causing many sacrifices on an undefined altar. Is this the freedom that they prayed for? Is this the democracy that they fought for? Is this the state of orderly institutions that they hoped for?The disappointment is greatest among the young, liberal, secular generation, university graduates, those who with their own bodies overthrew Mubarak. They have the sense that “they stole my revolution” because what they got instead of Mubarak is the regime of the Muslim Brotherhood, always suspected of actually being controlled by the “General Guide” of the movement, who controls the elected president – so they feel – like a puppet on a string. The presidential commands that Mursi issues throw Egypt back to the era of darkness and shadows, because also in the days of the military dictatorship since 1952, oppression was totally legal and based on government documents and presidential edicts. The liberal groups fear that the Brotherhood intends to implement Islamic Shari’a as the law of the land, and they fear that representatives of the government will begin spying on their moral conduct and checking if what they drink and eat is in accordance with the laws of Islam. The Copts, the Christian minority that sees itself as the original Egyptians, feel the noose closing around their necks, as their businesses are broken into, their houses are burned, their churches are attacked, their men are murdered and their women are humiliated. They are fleeing from Egypt in hordes and try to take their assets, like many intellectuals, and also some Muslims, who have understood in recent months that Egypt is slipping quickly and uncontrollably into a bitter and violent reality, totally different from what they hoped for in the past two years. Every businessman, actor, artist and academician, that leaves Egypt because of the situation, increases the sense of desolation for those who remain and increases their fear that they will be like mice that were unable to leave the sinking ship.Disappointment encompasses many sectors of the populace: the failure of the president to convene the constitutional committee, causes delays in formulating laws of the political game, and each side sees this as harming the goals of the revolution: the religious expect the constitution to be something that will ensure religious rule over the whole cycle of life, whereas the secular sector expects it to be a defense from religious rule controlling their free lives. Disappointment with the dysfunctional system is expressed in the public arena, and the slogans that appear on signs in the demonstrations of recent days are amazingly similar to the slogans of the demonstrations of two years ago against Mubarak: “Get Out”, “The People Want to Overthrow the Regime”. However, this time there are also new slogans such as: “Down with the Rule of Badi’” (the general guide of the Muslim Brotherhood), “Down , down with the Regime of the Guide”, “Civil Disobedience”, “Cancel the Dictatorial Edicts”, and “We Want a Constitution”.Another matter that raises the ire of many is the acquittals and light sentences that were given to the officers of the police and army, who were accused of killing demonstrators, and the acquittals that Mubarak and his sons got in some of the things that they were accused of. Every few days, demands are made to stand the symbols of the former regime to trial, even for matters that they have already been acquitted of, and when this demand is accompanied by violence, these people might find themselves again on trial and this time they will be convicted only to quiet down the street. Is this how a justice system is supposed to conduct itself?The turbulent atmosphere creates violent physical conflicts between groups of demonstrators, and demonstrations where groups with contradictory ideas are represented cause people to come into very violent contact with each other. Demonstrators attempt to break into government offices, police stations, economic institutions, and Western embassies and the police try to tone down the level of violence by using tear gas, clubs, and even live fire. But the police violence increases the violence of the civilian demonstrators and causes more injuries. The public immediately demands an investigation of the police brutality, but this demand, which is never met, increases the rage of the demonstrators against the violent regime, which is deaf to the sensitivities of the public.The demonstrations are not limited to Tahrir Square in Cairo. Other cities like Alexandria, Asyut, Aswan and Suez have also seen violent demonstrations in recent days, and the army has not yet been brought into play. It sits on the side and allows the many sides to wear each other out. The president tries to calm things down,] claiming that the undemocratic steps that he has taken, mainly placing his decisions above judicial review, are temporary steps that will be cancelled when the other institutions, mainly the parliament, begin to function. But Mursi is not convincing anyone, and some of the members of his opposition have brought back the tents to Tahrir Square, as if to tell him: “We are not moving until we overthrow you like we overthrew Mubarak”. The Conspiracy TheoryThe fact that Egyptian society lives in very crowded conditions means that anything anybody says is heard by many people. Rumors and theories spread among the population at lightning speed, and the weirder the theory, the more people believe it. The rumors going around today are that it is the remnants of the Mubarak regime who are causing Egypt’s problems in the Mursi era, and they just want to cause the collapse of the new system so that everyone will long for the days of Mubarak.The most interesting rumor is that the president of the United States supported the overthrow of Mubarak so that the Muslim Brotherhood would come to rule a state that is impossible to extract from the swamp its problems, and thus Obama would cause the Muslim Brotherhood to go bankrupt politically and lose its image. According to this theory, the whole process of the past year and a half, where the Muslim Brotherhood won the parliament and the presidency, was part of the American plan, and perhaps even a Zionist plan, that is intended to throw the Muslim Brotherhood into a trap, economically and administratively, where they will bleed to death.Another claim frequently heard is that every time a demonstration becomes an instance of mass violence, “our” side demonstrated peacefully, “silmiya” , but the other side, who oppose us, infiltrated into the demonstration and created provocations against the police and public institutions, throwing stones and Molotov cocktails, in order to get the police to beat us and then the media would make us out to be violent and uncultured. This claim is heard from all sides. But the newest conspiracy theory came lately from the study houses of the Salafi imams. They claim that the source of Egypt’s troubles is the remnants of the Pharaonic, heretical culture, which remains within the public arena in the Land of Islam, chiefly the Sphinx and the pyramids. He who dwells on high sees those statues and monuments as symbols of idol worship, and thinks that whoever would leave them standing on the soil of Egypt is perpetuating the Pharaonic heresy. Allah is furious at Egypt because of this, and causes Egypt to suffer political, public and economic plagues. The necessary conclusion to be drawn from this theory is that Egypt must expunge all remnants of the Pharaonic culture, including those in museums, because only then will the wrath of the Almighty be assuaged and Egypt will be cured of its ills. We saw a similar approach during the nineties in Afghanistan, which suffered from a long drought, and to quiet the rage of the Creator of the world, the Taliban smashed the two enormous, ancient statues of Buddha that were carved into the mountain in the area of Bamiyan, despite worldwide protests. One may assume that this fanatical attitude of the Taliban regarding cultures that preceded Islam was part of the justification of the war that the world began against them towards the end of 2001, following the attacks of September 11 in the United States. What would happen in Egypt if the Sphinx and the pyramids were destroyed, as some Salafis demand?Egypt seems today like a rickety cart that strong, immense horses are pulling in different directions: the Muslim Brotherhood, the Salafis, the seculars, remnants of the Mubarak regime, the military, the police, the General Intelligence Service, the president and the “street”, and these are in addition to the American, European and international forces, chiefly the International Bank. Will the cart survive the pressures and remain whole or perhaps it will shatter into little pieces, and every area in Egypt will solve its problems by itself. Will the Egyptian cart emerge whole from its straits? Time will tell. Is this an “Arab Spring”? That is not clear at all.===============

Dr. Mordechai Kedar (Mordechai.Kedar@biu.ac.il)
is an Israeli scholar of Arabic and Islam, a lecturer at
Bar-Ilan University and the director of the Center for the Study
of the Middle East and Islam (under formation), Bar Ilan
University, Israel. He specializes in Islamic ideology and
movements, the political discourse of Arab countries, the Arabic
mass media, and the Syrian domestic arena.

Translated from Hebrew by Sally Zahav with permission from the author.

Source:
The article is published in the framework of the Center for the
Study of the Middle East and Islam (under formation), Bar Ilan
University, Israel. Also published in Makor Rishon, a Hebrew weekly
newspaper.

Reality: Palestine Will Continue to be a Non-Existent State

Twenty-four years ago,
almost to the day, in 1988, I stood in a large hall in Algeria and saw
Yasir Arafat declare the independence of a Palestinian state. And that
was forty-one years, almost to the day, after the UN offered a
Palestinian state in 1947. Twelve years ago Israel and the United States
officially offered a Palestinian state as part of a compromise at deal
in the Camp David summit of 2000.

Arguably, despite all
their errors, the Palestinian movement has made progress since those
events, though it is not very impressive progress. Yet in real terms
there is no real Palestinian state; the movement is more deeply divided
than at any time in its history; and the people aren't doing very well.

Now the UN will probably give Palestine the status of a non-member
state. The only thing that will change is to convince people even more
that they are following a clever and successful strategy. They aren't.

Most
conservative observers are of the opinion that multiculturalism as it
has been understood and practiced is nothing short of a social and
economic disaster. And it must be said they are largely, if not
entirely, correct. The multicultural project in its contemporary form
suffers from two grievous flaws: the filter is too wide, allowing into
the country unskilled people who are poorly equipped to participate in a
modern, technologically oriented economy and who consequently become a
financial burden to the nation, disproportionately swelling the welfare
rolls; and, no less critical, many of these immigrant groups import the
hatreds, prejudices and conflicts of their countries of origin,
sequester themselves with official approval into closed or aggressive
enclaves, and often cause violence and disruption in the public life of
their new home. (Rape and “grooming” statistics compiled in the U.K. give a dataset that leaves in no doubt the ethnic make-up of the great majority of offenders.)

Of course, in those cases where immigrant societies, while preserving
their cultural habits and religious beliefs in the private sphere, make
every effort to integrate into the public domain, to respect the laws,
assumptions and folkways of their host, and to contribute to the
economic vitality of their adopted country—in such cases,
multiculturalism may be said to have succeeded. We are, after all, a
country of immigrants. Nearly everyone has an ancestor who was not born
here. But in every Western country, whether in North America, Europe or
parts of Australasia, there is one immigrant group whose more radical
members refuse to adapt to the heritage culture, insist on the supremacy
of their ideas and customs, shamelessly milk the dole, create havoc and
mayhem, and pose a serious threat to the security and wellbeing of the
larger population.

Not long ago I spent an afternoon at Kingsmere Park, the historic
estate of legendary Canadian prime minister, William Lyon Mackenzie
King, near the capital city, Ottawa. It was filled with thousands of
weekend visitors enjoying the vast landscaped gardens, rustic dwellings
and architectural ruins erected by King, who was prone to eccentric
visions of grandeur. I was, however, more impressed by the people than
by the site itself. They represented a microcosm of the Canadian census,
the changing and multi-hued face of the country, brown, black, white
and every shade in between, some speaking languages I could not
identify, others in languages that I could, and English in a bewildering
variety of accents and intonations. Many were garbed in a panoply of
exotic costumes. But they were Canadians, experiencing a piece of
Canadian history, reading the pamphlets and brochures provided by the
service personnel, pointing out objects of interest to their children,
and participating in the festive atmosphere of the place.

I spent most of the afternoon strolling about Kingsmere fascinated by
the prism of citizenship before me. But I did not see a single hijab,
or burka, or abaya, or chador, or niqab, or shalwar. I did not hear a
syllable of Arabic. So far as I could tell, or at any rate on that
particular day, a certain ethnic cohort seemed to be entirely absent.

A month or so later I attended the November 11 Remembrance Day
ceremony in Ottawa, a profoundly moving event that brought me to tears,
as it did many others among a multitude so large it could not be
reliably counted. The laying of wreaths, the war veterans parading by,
some in wheelchairs, the busby-topped buglers, the multi-denominational
speeches, the jets flying at low altitude, the 21-gun salute—all brought
to mind the debt of gratitude we owed to our soldiers and relit the
candle of patriotism, too often guttering or extinct, for one of the
more decent and tolerant countries on the planet. Recalling my earlier
experiment at Kingsmere, I began canvassing as much of the crowd as was
feasible under the circumstances to determine its composition; and, as
at the national site, it seemed no less chequered and comprehensive. I
did note one woman in a hijab staring impassively at the proceedings,
but apart from this anomaly, even after several hours, I was unable to
detect a single one of her congeners. Again, a certain ethnic cohort
appeared to be massively un-or under-represented.

The parallel memorial in Toronto, however, featured at least two
Muslim women, who made their presence felt not by honoring Canada’s war
dead and her living heroes but by disrupting the ceremony,
screaming obscenities at the crowd. A scuffle then broke out among some
of the participants although no arrests were made—probably because this
would have been offensive to a certain ethnic group. Food for thought,
although not especially appetizing fare.

The fact that Luton in the U.K. saw much greater abuse, the burning of poppies and the jeering at and taunting of British soldiers
returning from Afghanistan, is no consolation. The point is, to put it
bluntly, that such people should not have been welcomed into a
democratic country with a history of sacrifice and traditions of loyalty
that require respect. They are not genuine citizens but an obstreperous
and unproductive fifth column that works against the viability of the
country that has taken them in. And many seem to have all the time in
the world to attend protests and demonstrations when other people are
busy at their jobs—as I recently observed at a vehement pro-Hamas rally
before the Israeli embassy—so that it seems clear they are the welfare
beneficiaries of the very society they seek to subvert.

Here, once again, we are presented with the problem of
multiculturalism as it is currently implemented: we have opened the
gates to seditionists on the one hand and parasites on the other, two
categories that frequently coalesce. We need not be as strictly
exclusionary as, for example, Switzerland, where citizenship is
difficult to obtain. (My aunt, who worked for the International Labor
Organization in Geneva and has resided there for most of her life,
waited for years before citizenship was finally granted.) But if we are
to be candid and scorn the travesty of political correctness, we should
admit that citizenship is a precious gift and that it needs to be earned
and deserved.

This does not militate against any race, religion or ethnicity,
and we know that there are peaceful, law-abiding, responsible and
productive members of any and every immigrant group, without exception.
Therefore, the argument I am making for a rational immigration policy
is neither “racist” nor “xenophobic,” the favorite slanders of the
liberal-left political class that has a vested interest in promoting
indiscriminate multiculturalism. On the contrary, as philosopher Roger
Scruton, in a speech reported by The Brussels Journal,
has eloquently maintained, “the problem posed by the large-scale
immigration of people who do not enter into our own…way of life” affirms
the right “of indigenous communities to refuse admission to people who
cannot or will not assimilate.” The host society’s failure to sift
wisely among aspirants to citizenship leads inevitably to
“inter-communal strife” and to the political and cultural trauma of
“states that have been irreversibly changed through immigration”—changed
by those who refuse allegiance “to a shared home and the people who
have built it.”

The principle holds. Immigration policy in general should be louvered
toward the proper criteria of admissibility: capacity to contribute to
the life and prosperity of the nation, and willingness to integrate.
Anything less produces costs in political dissidence, cultural upheaval
and fiscal extortion we are increasingly unable to defray.David SolwaySource: http://frontpagemag.com/2012/david-solway/the-problem-with-multiculturalism/Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

When
it comes to the Jews, the French have a long, checkered history of
treachery. French anti-Semitism is well known and deeply embedded in
French culture. It therefore comes as no surprise that France will
likely be the first major Western power to recognize Palestinian
statehood, according to a statement released by the French Foreign Ministry.

No doubt, the continued Arab migration to France and the influence
Muslims wield in that spineless country played a role in shaping
France’s disastrous foreign policy decision. Yet the French decision is
consistent with their perfidious past and it is likely that they would
have embarked on the same trajectory with or without indigenous Muslim
influence.

The French prefer to think of themselves as an enlightened people but
the sad fact is that French cultural anti-Semitism is among the most
insidious and embedded of all of Europe. Assimilated or not, Jews have
always been the preferred target of the French cultural elite and French
history is peppered with such examples.

Consider the infamous case of Alfred Dreyfus, a captain in the French
artillery corps and fully assimilated Jew, falsely accused by the
French military establishment of passing military secrets to the
Germans. Dreyfus was arrested and charged with treason by French
authorities in 1894. He was found guilty by a French kangaroo court and
spent the next four years of his life on Devil’s Island. Despite
overwhelming and incontrovertible evidence of his innocence, French
authorities, infected with anti-Semitism from the top down, refused to
budge. It was not until 1906 that a French military commission fully
exonerated Dreyfus.

It is no secret that among the Western nations occupied by the Nazis
during World War II, the French were the most willing collaborators
going well beyond what was requested of them by their Nazi masters. It
was not until 1995 that the French acknowledged their dastardly role in
their systematic efforts to exterminate French Jewry. The stench of
French collaboration and the role they played in the murder of their own
citizens, simply because they were of Jewish decent, will remain a
permanent stain on France.

In 1967, when Israel was under existential threat from her Islamic
neighbors, French President Charles de Gaulle initiated an arms embargo
on Israel and refused to deliver 50 Mirage Vs, which had already been
paid for by Israel. Adding insult to injury, the French sold the
aircraft to Qaddafi’s Libya, a sworn enemy of the Jewish State.

Iraq under the murderous Saddam Hussein maintained close relations
with France. Indeed, France among all the Western powers, stood out as
Iraq’s closest ally. French Prime Minister Jacques Chirac even referred
to Hussein – the man who threatened to “burn half of Israel” and who provided cash for the families of homicide bombers – as his “personal friend.”
France was also instrumental in providing Hussein with a nuclear
reactor despite justifiable fears that such a reactor would be used by
Hussein to produce WMDs.

France has a long history of cozying up to anti-Western characters.
She provided safe haven to Ayatollah Khomeini and embraced arch
terrorist Yasser Arafat as well as Syria’s former President and serial
killer Hafez al-Assad.

As recent as this year, France’s consul general in Jerusalem engaged in historical revisionism
by issuing an asinine statement that attempted to sever the historical
Jewish nexus with the Land of Israel. In a speech on archeology in
Israel, Consul General Frederic Desagneaux made repeated references to
“Palestine’ and “Palestinian archeology” without once referencing Israel
or Jews, as if the history of that region began and ended with
so-called Palestinian Arabs.

The French now come full circle with their recently announced
intention to recognize Palestinian statehood. The French ambassador to
London once referred to Israel as “that shitty little country.”
Judging by France’s collaborationist past and its associations with
less than reputable characters, the ambassador’s pejoratives accurately
describe France to a T.Ari Lieberman Source: http://frontpagemag.com/2012/ari-lieberman/the-french-connection-to-anti-semitism/Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Prime Minister Netanyahu: There is only one way peace can be achieved — through direct negotiations without preconditions • U.N. General Assembly expected to approve a Palestinian petition seeking observer state status.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas (left) with U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon at U.N. headquarters in New York on Wednesday.

|Photo credit: AP

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insisted Thursday that the Palestinian bid for U.N. recognition, which is expected to be approved by a majority in the U.N. General Assembly, "will not change a thing, and certainly won't hasten the establishment of a Palestinian state."

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas was to speak at the General Assembly on Thursday to seek the status of an observer state for the Palestinian Authority. The move is widely seen as an indirect bid for U.N. recognition of statehood. Israel has failed to garner a "moral minority" of countries, mostly in Europe, to vote against the measure. The Palestinians are certain to win U.N. recognition as a state but success could exact a high price: delaying an independent state of Palestine because of Israel's vehement opposition.

"Israel's hand is perpetually extended toward peace, but no Palestinian state will exist without recognition of Israel as the state of the Jewish people. No Palestinian state will exist without a declaration of an end to hostilities, and no Palestinian state will exist without real security arrangements that will protect the State of Israel and its citizens. None of these things are remotely mentioned in the Palestinian petition to the U.N," Netanyahu said in a statement.

"There is only one way peace can be achieved," he continued. "Through direct negotiation between the sides without preconditions, not through unilateral U.N. resolutions that don't take Israel's existence and security into account at all. Peace will be achieved through understandings between Jerusalem and Ramallah, not detached declarations at the U.N."

Netanyahu further said no one should be alarmed by the applause the Palestinian bid will elicit at the U.N. headquarters.

"As prime minister of Israel, I will not allow the establishment of another Iranian terror center in the heart of the country, in Judea and Samaria, about 1 kilometer (0.6 miles) from here, from the center of Jerusalem,” he said. “No matter how many countries vote against us, there is no force in the world that can compel me to compromise Israel's security."

Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon (Yisrael Beytenu) echoed Netanyahu's remarks on Thursday, telling Israel Radio that the Palestinian status upgrade was "meaningless." Ayalon said that in any future negotiations, Jerusalem would now present only a tougher stance, seeking international guarantees for any understandings, should any be struck.

"Abbas once again proved that he supports diplomatic terror," Ayalon said.

Cabinet Secretary Zvi Hauser also declared that the Palestinian petition would undermine peace efforts, stressing that the Palestinians needed to understand that Middle East peace would only be achieved through negotiations.

"This [Palestinian move] constitutes a breaking of the rules, which allows the Israeli government the freedom to take any steps it deems necessary to protect Israel's interests," Hauser said.

However, former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert voiced the opposing view on Wednesday, telling the Daily Beast, “I believe that the Palestinian request from the United Nations is congruent with the basic concept of the two-state solution. Therefore, I see no reason to oppose it. It is time to give a hand to, and encourage, the moderate forces among the Palestinians. Abu Mazen [Abbas] and Salam Fayyad [the Palestinian Authority prime minister] need our help. It's time to give it.”

Meanwhile, it emerged Thursday that Germany would abstain from the General Assembly vote. In recent days, Germany, which was expected to vote against the initiative, has been deliberating what to do.

"We did not take this decision lightly," German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said in a statement Thursday. "Germany shares the goal of a Palestinian state. We have campaigned for this in many ways ... but the decisive steps toward real statehood can only be the result of negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians."

According to media sources, the Foreign Ministry believes that the Czech Republic, which was also expected to vote against the initiative, may now follow suit and abstain.

It was beginning to seem all but certain that the Palestinian petition would gain wide support and ultimately garner official approval. Barring any last-minute surprises preventing Abbas from speaking, the Palestinian Authority is guaranteed an automatic majority.

The Prime Minister's Office and the Foreign Ministry were concentrating on the fact that with his petition Abbas would be violating an explicit request made by U.S. President Barack Obama, and that his actions would likely undermine the prospects of future peace negotiations.

"This is a meaningless resolution," said one senior official in Jerusalem, saying that only the U.N. Security Council could approve the establishment of a state.

"After failing to be accepted as a member state by the U.N., they are approaching the General Assembly to achieve symbolic recognition," the official said. "This will be the third time they gain symbolic recognition from the U.N.”

What exactly the diplomatic upgrade will mean is debatable. The Palestinians argue that the upgraded status would serve as a stepping stone toward independent statehood. The only thing that will change will be the Palestinian Authority's access to all U.N. bodies, including the International Court of Justice in The Hague, which accepts petitions from the U.N. Should they wish to do so, the Palestinians would be able to file frequent legal complaints against Israel's actions in the West Bank with the court and wage a war of attrition of sorts against Israeli policy within every U.N. body.

But beyond that, the practical implications of the Palestinian initiative are not clear.

"Will the Palestinians have a state tomorrow? No. Will they have borders and independence? No. Will new Palestinian institutions be established on the way to freedom? Also, no. So, ultimately, on the ground, this move has no practical significance whatsoever," said one U.N. diplomat.

The U.N. vote on the issue will be part of the international day of solidarity with the Palestinians, marked annually on Nov. 29. During the course of the day, speeches and resolutions favoring the Palestinians are expected, peaking around 10 p.m. Israel time with Abbas' speech. Abbas' remarks will be followed by Israeli Ambassador Ron Prosor's rebuttal speech. After several additional speeches, the General Assembly is expected to vote.

As a sign of the importance Israel attaches to the vote, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman flew to New York and was scheduled to meet Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon before the vote. Prosor had been scheduled to speak in the General Assembly after Abbas, but it appears Lieberman may now make Israel's case opposing the resolution.

The Palestinians require a majority of 98 members out of 193. At this point, it seems about 150 member states will vote in favor.

France announced its support for the move two days ago, and official sources told Israel Hayom on Wednesday that after Israel's Operation Pillar of Defense in the Gaza Strip, it was important to France to boost Abbas' status. In addition, Switzerland, Austria, Denmark and Spain announced Wednesday that they would vote in favor. Together with Portugal, Norway, Ireland and others, about half of Europe's countries are expected to stand by Abbas. Brazil, which as a member state will be presenting the Palestinian petition, will also support the initiative.

Alongside the U.S., Israel's closest ally, additional countries expected to oppose the bid are Holland, Italy and Australia. Britain, which has demanded that the Palestinians vow to return to the negotiating table and refrain from petitioning the International Court of Justice, kept its cards close to its chest, but it will most likely abstain.

In response to the Washington Post ombudsman’s comparison
of Hamas missiles to “bee stings” the other day, Israeli Ambassador
Michael Oren took the media to task in WaPo’s opinion section this
morning. Oren doesn’t single out ombud Patrick Pexton directly, but it’s
clearly implied:

Media naturally gravitate toward dramatic and highly visual stories.
Reports of 5.5 million Israelis gathered nightly in bomb shelters
scarcely compete with the Palestinian father interviewed after losing
his son. Both are, of course, newsworthy, but the first tells a more
complete story while the second stirs emotions.This is precisely what Hamas wants. It seeks to instill a visceral
disgust for any Israeli act of self-defense, even one taken after years
of unprovoked aggression.Hamas strives to replace the tens of thousands of phone calls and
text messages Israel sent to Palestinian civilians, warning them to
leave combat zones, with lurid images of Palestinian suffering. If Hamas
cannot win the war, it wants to win the story of the war. …Like Americans, we cherish a free press, but unlike the terrorists,
we are not looking for headlines. Our hope is that media resist the
temptation to give them what they want.

As Oren writes, this is exactly the kind of coverage that benefits
Hamas, and the frustrating part is many journalists don’t seem to have a
problem with it. Israel has the right to use force to defend its own
people from attacks, but media figures like Pexton act as if any
response is out-of-bounds simply because Israel has a strong military.

To give an analogy, there are no
reliable estimates of Taliban and insurgent casualties in Afghanistan,
but the numbers are obviously much larger than the number of fallen NATO
forces. Add in the number of Afghan civilian casualties (the majority
of them killed by the Taliban and its allies) and that would greatly
outweigh the number of NATO fatalities. The Taliban also fights with
unsophisticated weapons, improvised explosive devices and Soviet-era
rifles, and limited training. Often the Taliban blows up its own
fighters while setting up IEDs; in some cases they fail to go off or are
detected. Meanwhile, the U.S. has the greatest military the world has
ever seen. Not only do NATO troops have access to far superior weapons
and training, but billions are spent on counter-IED efforts and
protective gear.

Yet serious journalists don’t contrast the number of NATO fatalities
with the number of insurgency fatalities (or lump in Afghan civilian
deaths with Taliban deaths) without putting it in proper context. They
don’t compare the Taliban’s IEDs and small-arms attacks — which have
caused horrific NATO casualties — to “bee stings on a bear’s behind.”
They don’t describe U.S. defense against insurgency attacks as
“disproportionate,” or set it up as a David v. Goliath scenario.

Hamas is as much a terrorist group as the Taliban, but they are not
treated that way by a large portion of the media. As Oren argues, this
type of coverage will only encourage more violence from Hamas, not less.Alana GoodmanSource: http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2012/11/29/oren-media-bias-helps-terrorists/Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

by John RossomandoThe United States border with Mexico remains open to exploitation by
Hizballah and other Islamic terror groups that have aligned themselves
with Mexican drug cartels, a report released Wednesday by a House
Homeland Security Committee subcommittee finds.

"This is an area that has gone largely ignored and overlooked, and
yet it is right in our backyard," subcommittee Chairman Rep. Michael
McCaul, R-Texas., said during the hearing. "We talk about the Middle
East a lot and we talk about North Africa and Egypt and Libya, and yet
something's happening not too far from here that I think the American
people have no idea the threat level that it presents to us."

Intelligence gathered during the 2011 raid of Osama bin Laden's
compound showed that al-Qaida contemplated using operatives with valid
Mexican passports to enter the United States to conduct terror
operations.

"… [T]he U.S.-Mexican border is an obvious weak link in the chain.
Criminal elements could migrate down the path of least resistance and
with them the terrorists who continue to seek our destruction," the
report says.

Existing weapons and human smuggling networks along the Mexican
border give terrorists confidence that they will be able to plan and
execute major terror attacks that require a long-term presence in the
United States, the report says.

McCaul led a fact-finding mission to the Tri-border region of South
America of Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina to see the Hizballah threat
first-hand, concluding that Iran and Hizballah pose a serious threat to
the U.S. southern border.

"What we are seeing here is a marriage between Hizballah, the [Iranian] Quds Force and these drug cartels," McCaul said.

A substantial link between Hizballah and the drug cartels was exposed in the indictment of Ayman "Junior" Joumaa, a Lebanese national who was accused of selling 85,000 kilos of cocaine to Mexico's Los Zetas drug cartel from 2005 to 2007.

"This nexus potentially provides Iranian operatives with undetected access into the United States," the report says.

"If there is, God forbid, a strike from Israel into Iran, the
retaliation will be certain, and it will be swift, not just against
Israel, but in the entire Middle East, and it will also expand into this
hemisphere," McCaul said. "It will light up Hizballah operatives I
think in Latin America; it will also activate Hizballah cells in the
United States."John Rossomando

If we really want to take an
effective stand against extremism, we should not obsess over the
extremists; rather, we should tackle those who facilitate, empower and
legitimize extremism. The worst culprits are particular British Members
of Parliament – elected officials whom we employ to safeguard our
liberties and democratic rights but who betray these duties in favor of
promoting the work of terror advocates. We have given terror and its
apologists a platform, while we deny truth, reason and accountability a
voice.

On the 28th November, Labour MP Jeremy Corbyn will be hosting an event organised by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign
in the British House of Commons with Mousa Abu Maria, an activist for
the proscribed terrorist organisation Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ).
Abu Maria will be speaking as part of a panel discussion – the
conclusion to an anti-Israel lobbying day held by the Palestine
Solidarity Campaign (PSC). The PSC is the leading anti-Israel
organisation in Britain, whose members are accused by human rights
activists of practising Holocaust denial and supporting terrorist groups such as Hamas.

Abu Maria spent several years in prison in Israel for his membership
in the PIJ and for throwing Molotov cocktails. In 2003, he was released
as part of a prisoner exchange. Five years later, he was placed in
administrative detention, once again because of his connections to the
PIJ. His appeals to the Israeli High Court of Justice were rejected.

Although Abu Maria claims he is no longer involved with the PIJ, as
recently as May 2012 he has been photographed standing next to PIJ
member Khader Adnan while holding a poster which declared support for
Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorists Bilal Diab and Thaer Halahleh.

Abu Maria's organisation, the Palestine Solidarity Project (PSP),
also took part in a demonstration in Nabi Saleh in April 2012, in which
they displayed posters in support of a number of violent terrorists.

On
the posters in the photo below, right to left: Ahmad Sa'adat of the
PFLP, Marwan Barghouti of the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades (he is serving 5
life sentences for murder) as well as Bilal Diab and Tha'er Halahleh of
Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

This is not the first time that Corbyn has provided a platform for
individuals linked to terrorism. In the past, he has played host to,
inter alia, the Palestine Return Centre,
a British lobbying group which openly supports Hamas; and Djab Abou
Jahjah of the Arab European League, an organisation which has published anti-Semitic cartoons and voiced support for Samir Kuntar, the terrorist who beat a small Israeli girl to death on the beaches of the Israeli coastal town of Nahariya.

Corbyn has described
Israel's Operation Cast Lead, the last major conflict with Hamas in
2009, as a "military ethnic cleansing of the area". Regarding the recent
Israeli Operation Pillar of Defense - which worked to destroy Hamas
rocket stockpiles after over 700 missiles were fired at Israeli
civilians since the beginning of 2012 - Corbyn has noted: "There is no
limit to the hatred and persecution emanating from Israel toward these
people [the Palestinians]."

Last year, Corbyn invited the Islamist hate preacher Raed Saleh to
speak in Parliament. Saleh is a leading supporter of Hamas, and is known
for his anti-Semitic and homophobic views. He has claimed that 4000
Jews skipped work at the World Trade Centre on 9/11 and that those who
killed the "Martyr, Sheikh Osama Bin Laden" had "sold their consciences
to Satan, and that the honour killings of girls is acceptable. One of
Saleh's poems includes the lines:

You Jews are criminal bombers of mosques,Slaughterers of pregnant women and babies.Robbers and germs in all times,The Creator sentenced you to be loser monkeys,Victory belongs to Muslims, from the Nile to the Euphrates.

Saleh is best known for his frequent invocation of the 'blood libel'
-- an ancient anti-Semitic claim that Jews kill children to use their
blood to make bread at Passover. Even a British court concluded that Saleh's comments were hateful of Jews.

Despite the evidence of Saleh's animosity to Jews, Corbyn has
continued to demonstrate support for him. Most alarmingly, in response
to the uproar at the prospect of Saleh's appearance in the House of
Commons, Corbyn has backed
calls by Saleh's lawyer for an inquiry into supposed Jewish influence
within the Conservative Party, falsely accused of organising the
opposition to Saleh's visit.

Corbyn enjoys being described
as an "anti-fascist". By invoking the language of human rights, Corbyn
has managed to escape the condemnation he so rightly deserves. As a
Member of Parliament and as a veteran of the Labour Party, Corbyn's
support for people such as Abu Maria helps to legitimize the very
existence of pro-terror groups.

It is little surprise that now, over a year later, Corbyn is once
again providing a platform to a terror activist at the heart of the
British establishment. Alongside Abu Maria, Corbyn's fellow panellists
include Baroness Jenny Tonge, who was forced out of the Liberal Democrat
Party after she stated:
"Beware Israel. Israel is not going to be there forever in its present
form. One day, the United States of America will get sick of giving
£70bn a year to Israel to support what I call America's aircraft carrier
in the Middle East – that is Israel. One day, the American people are
going to say to the Israel lobby in the USA: enough is enough. Israel
will lose support and then they will reap what they have sown."

Furthermore, echoing a Hezbollah blood libel conspiracy claim, Tonge has previously suggested that Israeli medical teams were harvesting the organs of children in Haiti.

In 2009, Corbyn announced,
during an address at a rally by the far-Left group Stop the War
Coalition, that he was proud to be hosting an event in Parliament with
"our friends from Hezbollah". Hezbollah, like Hamas, is listed by the
USA and Israel as a terrorist organisation. Its attacks have murdered
Jews all around the World, from the bombing of a Jewish culture centre
in Argentina to the suicide bombing of a bus full of Israeli tourists in
Bulgaria. In 2006, Hezbollah terrorists crossed over the border from
Lebanon into Israel and attacked an Israeli army patrol -- sparking a
war in which thousands died. Hassan Nasrallah, the Hezbollah leader, has
condemned the idea of peace with Israel and has said, "If they (Jews) all gather in Israel, it will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide". According to Jeremy Corbyn, however, Hezbollah is working to "bring about long term peace and social justice and political justice in the whole region".

There is an important difference between tolerating extremism and
empowering it. The former permits persons such as Abu Maria to argue on
behalf of his ideology at privately organised events. Empowering
extremism is quite different and unreservedly self-destructive – by
providing pro-terror activists a platform in the House of Commons, we
sanitize their work and legitimize their message.

Alarmingly, Corbyn is just one example. The empowerment of extremism
is a cross-party sickness. Last month, Jane Ellison, a Conservative MP,
hosted a meeting in Parliament for the 'Save Shaker Aamer' campaign.
Shaker Aamer is the last British resident held in Guantanamo Bay. The
Save Shaker Aamer campaign and the organisations that support it,
however, do not fight to preserve habeas corpus, but rather they defend
Aamer's support for the Taliban. During her involvement with this issue,
Ellison has been happy to share platforms with pro-Taliban groups such
as CagePrisoners and Hamas supporters such as Yvonne Ridley.

A cursory search of British media archives
reveals hundreds of editorials, opinion pieces and polls debating
whether to give far-right groups a platform – most concluding they
should not. And yet of the Islamists and terror activists who support
terrorism against Jews, the execution of homosexuals and the stoning of
adulterous women, the media has published almost nothing.

Indeed, the small amount of coverage that does exist has even been
sympathetic. Mahmoud Abu Rideh, for example, a Saudi Arabian national
who was detained by British authorities in 2001 and placed under a
control order in 2005, worked closely with the hook-handed
hate-preacher, Abu Hamza, and was accused of fundraising for and
distributing funds to al Qaeda groups. In spite of this, Amnesty
International and CagePrisoners campaigned on his behalf – both groups implying he was the innocent victim of a conspiracy.

Further, the Guardian and the Independent – two of
Britain's largest broadsheet newspapers – ran puff pieces that painted
Abu Rideh as a persecuted refugee who just wanted a peaceful life, and
featured photographs of Abu Rideh's children looking despondent. And yet
in 2010, Abu Rideh was killed in Afghanistan while fighting alongside
the Taliban. We have given terror and its apologists a platform, while
we deny truth, reason and accountability a voice.

Both Corbyn and Abu Maria have adopted the title of human rights activists; the latter claiming
he is "committed to the non-violent struggle for freedom and equality
for all". It is possible to understand who a person is by examining what
sort of company he keeps: Corbyn's support for Hamas and Hezbollah, and
Abu Maria's involvement with the PIJ reveal that their putative
commitment to human rights is nothing more than a façade – one that
hides a far more sinister support for ideological forces with a sworn
aversion to peace.

Despite the calls by Jewish groups for Abu Maria to be denied entry
to the UK, it seems unlikely that the British Government will act. The
continuing invitations by MPs such as Corbyn for pro-terror demagogues
to speak in the British House of Commons is fast becoming the norm –
voices of a hijacked humanitarian narrative promote extremism and hatred
unchallenged by politicians, media and human rights organisations. We
have given terror and its apologists a platform, while we deny truth,
reason and accountability a voice.Samuel WestropSource: http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3467/jeremy-corbyn-mousa-abu-mariaCopyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Shi'ite Iran, from its inception
in 1979, saw Sunni organizations, such as Hamas, as tools with which to
undermine the Sunni rulers, who control most of the Arab world.

A full scale Middle Eastern, Islamic type of war between the Sunnis
and Shiites is raging. Officials in Washington are doing their best to
label it anything but a war; when asked if it is a war, they seem to
react in fear, and ignore the issue by saying, "We must do our best to
ensure that such a war does not happen."

By refusing to label what is going on a war, however, we may well be
preventing ourselves from devising policies which would address the
problem, and make it evolve in the best interests of the US.

Historically, Islamic warfare has not necessarily been one in which
large armies have fought each other, at least at the beginning of
conflicts. What usually happens is that there are what we in the West
call "terrorist raids," in which opposing sides send small raiding
parties into each other's territory. These raids are ongoing and cause
both sides to live in a constant state of tension with one another.

The dispute then festers until one side is strong enough to vanquish
the other; from that day on, each side lives in an uneasy relationship
with the other. The vanquished look for an opportunity to avenge their
loss. Sadly, Middle Easterners culturally are unable bring themselves to
"let bygones be bygones" – a concept totally alien to Middle Eastern
culture. Disputes therefore fester, then erupt when one side perceives
the other as weak.

When Khomeini arrived in Iran in February 1979, one of the first
statements he made to the media on the tarmac was that "he had come to
rectify a wrong which took place 1400 years ago." Westerners thought
this somewhat quaint and obviously irrelevant. All that interested them
was what he had to say about the Shah, America, and Israel. To
Westerners, especially Americans, who dismiss things that happened a few
days ago, Khomeini mumbling about some event that took place centuries
ago seemed irrelevant. Middle Easterners, however, who never forget
perceived wrongs, knew exactly what he was talking about. When the
Muslim prophet Muhammad died in 632 CE, a fight broke out among the
Muslims as to who would inherit the leadership of Islam. Those who
supported their prophet's family eventually became known as the
Shi'ites. Those who supported what might be labeled the "establishment"
in Mecca became known as the Sunnis.

The Shi'ites were defeated and their leaders were, one by one,
murdered by the Sunnis, who proceeded to take over the larger part of
Muslim world. Sunnis and Shi'ites – especially in areas where they live
together - still refight that battle, which took place almost 1400 years
ago. Moreover, thanks to the easy way information travels, Sunnis and
Shi'ites know more about each other than in the past, so this battle now
also takes place even where Sunnis and Shi'ites never knew each other.
What ended up being most important to Khomeini was not the Shah,
therefore, but devising a strategy to rectify what he considered the
great wrong that took place so long ago: bringing down the Sunni rulers
and their version of Islam, and replacing them with the "true," Shi'ite,
version of Islam.No wonder Saudi rulers, who are members of an extreme Sunni version
of Islam called Wahhabism, and their fellow Gulf Cooperation Council
Sunni-ruled Gulf States, understood immediately that Khomeini was a
mortal threat.

Sadly, our political establishment, who, as Westerners, simply do not
live as deeply in history, had an immensely difficult time -- and still
do -- assimilating Saudi, Jordanian, Egyptian, and other allied
leaders' concerns.

In addition, on 9/11, Osama bin Laden vented his rage, blaming the West for what it did to Islam 80 years ago.
Western experts of the Middle East racked their brains trying to figure
out what that meant, but to Sunni Muslims, the answer was obvious: the
Ottoman Caliphate was abolished by Ataturk and his colleagues. Many
Muslims believe this degradation was imposed on Turkey after its defeat
in World War I. For Sunnis, the Ottoman Caliph, the rightful ruler of
the entire Muslim world, had been humiliated by people who could not
have been Muslims. For Shi'ites, the abolishment of this "usurper"
institution was a relief; the Sunni ruler, they believed, wanted nothing
more than to destroy Shi'ism, the only "true" Islam.

As for last week's mini-war between Israel and Hamas, the members of
Hamas are Sunni fundamentalists; it therefore seems it would be only
natural for the Sunni world to support them. But Iran, from the
inception of the Islamic Republic in 1979, saw organizations such as
Hamas as tools to help them undermine the Sunni rulers, who control most
of the Arab world.

Iranians understood that they could not stand up to the Arab world
militarily, so Iran looked for Arab causes to support, which would
demonstrate to the Arab masses that their rulers were weak and unable to
solve problems, such as Israel's existence in the heart of the Arab and
Muslim world, and the tyranny under which Arabs live.

First, the Iranians took over the Israel issue. For many years, Arab
rulers had talked about defeating Israel but kept failing, thus heaping
shame and humiliation on the Muslims -- in Middle Eastern culture, a
fate worse than death. So Iran took on the Israel issue, which is, at
best, peripheral to Shi'ites. For Shi'ites, the supposed holy status of
Jerusalem is a Sunni innovation. The "holy status" was invented by hated
Sunni rulers about 50 years after Muhammad's death, and thus to
Shi'ites is an illegal innovation. Iran seems to have calculated that if
it made this Sunni issue its own, and it stood up to the Israelis, it
might gain the support of the Sunni masses against their rulers, and
thus help Iran destroy these Sunni rulers and thereby win an important
battle in their unending 1,400 year war against the Sunnis.

In Lebanon, moreover, Iran created Hizbullah, a Shi'ite military
organization – actually an arm of the Iranian military -- which
eventually fought Israel to a standstill in 2006. This was a huge public
relations boost for Iran: no Sunni leaders had ever before managed to
best Israel. Almost no Arab rulers complained about Israel going into
Lebanon, while at the same time the head of Hizbullah, Hassan Nasrallah,
instantly became a folk hero in many parts of the Arab world.

For Iran, Gaza was an opportunity too good to pass up. Iran developed
ways of supplying Hamas with weapons to use against Israel, making use
of Egypt's marginal control of the Sinai Peninsula that abuts Gaza. Over
the past few years, Iran has supplied Gaza with missiles and rockets
that could hit Tel Aviv, and has brought Hamas operatives to Iran for
training.

After the so-called ceasefire, Ismail Haniyeh, one of Hamas's senior
political leaders, went out of his way to thank Iran for its help.
Thereafter, Iran dispatched a ship with missiles to resupply Hamas with
missiles.

Egypt, by contrast, appeared not to want trouble on its border with
Israel, and worked with Israel to rein Hamas in. Egypt's fundamentalist
Sunni ruler from the Muslim Brotherhood, Muhammad Morsi, did not, as one
might have expected, side with Hamas -- a sub-branch of the Egyptian
Muslim brotherhood -- against Israel. Morsi seems to have many reasons
for avoiding a conflict:

Egypt's economy is collapsing; Morsi needs American economic support or he will not be able to feed his people.

If Egypt attacked Israel, Israel might destroy Egypt's military,
which currently is no match for Israel's; so it is in the Egyptian
military's interest to keep the peace.

If Morsi fights Israel, his military -- which is still in place from
the days of Hosni Mubarak, even though, upon assuming power, Morsi
replaced its leaders, and which benefits from American military largesse
and which controls vast parts of the economy -- might overthrow him.

Morsi wants to consolidate his power at home, and then, after
becoming a modern pharaoh, push the Muslim Brotherhood's agenda not only
to re-Islamize Egypt, but also the rest of the Muslim world. This plan
may be tall and clearly long-term, but ever since the Muslim
Brotherhood's founding in 1928, that has been its main goal. Morsi is
himself a senior member of the Brotherhood.

The timing of Hamas's attack on Israel put Morsi in a bind: even
though he had not yet consolidated his power, if the situation had
gotten truly out of hand, Morsi might have been forced into confronting
Israel.

Combining all of these reasons, Morsi won the day: he mediated
between Hamas and Israel, stopped the conflict from zooming out of
control, and pacified the Americans who would now feel required to
continue the economic, military and even political support Morsi so
desperately needs to keep his sweeping new authoritarian powers beyond
the reach of any check or balance. By not getting into a war with
Israel, Morsi kept the Egyptian military at bay.

It is therefore not surprising that Morsi felt he could strike now in
Egypt and grant himself these full dictatorial powers – far greater
than Mubarak ever had – and there would be nothing that America, now
feeling indebted to him, would do about it.

The Sunni fundamentalist Morsi is still engaged in an existential
battle with the Iranian Shi'ites for the hearts and minds of Islam. Each
side loathes the other. If one side triumphs in this 1,400 year old
conflict, the other side loses. From Morsi's point of view, however, it
seems that this fight must wait for another time.

Iran seems to be losing everywhere. In Syria, where its Alawite
rulers are an offshoot of Shi'ism and recognized by many Shi'ite
authorities as Shi'ites, Iran is losing this war to the more numerous
local Sunnis.

Lebanon is also unstable; Hizbullah members there appear unsure how
they can survive without the support of the Syrian Alawites. Iran is
also a long way off, and it is not easy to resupply Hizbullah from
there.

In Sudan, Iran's weapons plants have been destroyed. It was weapons from these factories which made their way to Gaza.

Could Israel's massive destruction of Hamas's rocket and missile
capability be one more step on the road to eliminating Iran's nuclear
program? Iran's allies are being destroyed or weakened, one by one.
Sudan and Gaza are gone, at least for the time being. The Syrian regime
does not appear to be winning its ruthless war against its insurgents.
Will Hizbullah be able to remain strong without weapons coming in from
Syria? Clearly, Hizbullah's leader, Hassan Nasrallah, cannot, whatever
he says, feel so secure: he has spent most of the past few years hiding
underground from the Israelis. Shi'ite-ruled Iraq is preoccupied with
its internal problems. Iran is gradually being left to stand alone. If
Israel attacks Iran, Iran no longer has any useful Muslim allies to help
it against the Israelis. Iran would therefore have greater difficulty
confronting Israel.

In the end, Hamas was a pawn for Iran in the Sunni-Shiite war. Its
leaders may be wondering where to turn, now that Egypt is ruled by
fellow Sunni fundamentalists. For the moment, at least, Egypt does not
seem to want to provoke Israel. Both Hamas and Iran, therefore, stand to
gain from continuing their close relationship. Morsi understands that
the Iranians want nothing more than to have the Sunnis confront Israel
and lose -- a defeat which would help Iran in its war against the
Sunnis.

Hamas has become a tool for both the Sunni and Shi'ite
fundamentalists to use in their battle not only against the non-Muslim
world, but against each other. If, in the Middle East, bygones cannot be
bygones, this battle will continue until Allah decides which side is
the most worthy and makes sure that side wins.Harold RhodeSource: http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3472/hamas-sunni-shiiteCopyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.